It has come to my hattenshun that several of thee croo ave not been usin your assigned Bart Hindustries Corporate Fish Head Stoo Bowls. This be disconcerting, as it was repeatedly hemphasised during thee corporate team/croo bowl standardishun meeting/briefing that standard bowl usage be an essential part o this year's Bart Hindustries Brand Revitaizashun strategy, as outlined in our annual Bart Industries Team Visualisation Hornpipe/deck Hoedown.

Please ensure that thee next time ye be summoned to the galley for a ration o Fish Head Stoo and a dried biskit, ye retrieve your Bart Industries Corporate Bowl from thee assigned bowl locker and consume thee stoo from therein. Failure to comply will result in thee removal of all non-corporate team bowls from thee galley.

Furthermore, please be aware that for all further shore leave, regulation Bart Industries Peg Legs must be worn out and be checked back in by thee quartermaster. Any further occurrence of hollow peg legs filled with rum will be severely dealt with by the management.

Your Captain.

The smoke wafted gently in the breeze across the poop deck and all seemed right in the world.

Nice try Bart but that's nowhere near as incomprehensible as real managment speak. You didn't even mention cascading pro-active shrinkage reduction implementations to solution colleagues (telling staff not to eat all the biscuits to the rest of us).

Too old to give up but too young to rest - Pete Townshend

I would rather be a rising ape than a falling angel - Sir Terry Pratchett

Yarr thee returnin unlooked for o so many old Pirates (well two) has hinspired me ta write a noo Long Winded Tale in conjunkshun wiv me old writin partner The Black Spot. We ave ta get drunk first so thee memories of our Far Fetched but true adventoors come floodin back loik a pint o last months scrumpee.

The smoke wafted gently in the breeze across the poop deck and all seemed right in the world.

Oi 'ad to travel with thee landlubbers thee other day, and oi 'ad an hexperience which will scarify yoo into senility! Oi 'ad to go inland - it was a necessary mission to pillage for grog - and oi used one o' them bus contraptions. Oi did see all sorts o' scary folk. One o' them must 'ave been a witch, as 'e 'ad sum koind o' devoice which proiduced these 'orrible sounds loike an 'erd of olyphaunts bein' drowned in a vat of aceed. It assaulted me ears to such a degree, that oi 'ad to say to the scurvy landlubber that 'is noise was upsettin' a number of people, includin' me. 'E threatend me with voilence! Can yoo believe that? Oi 'adn't put on me pirate regalia, as oi was bein' incognitow, but as soon as oi got out me cutlass, 'e soon backed down an' apologoised, but for a whoile it were very scary.

Roland Deschain - Half prophet, half gunslinger, all Pastafarian!

"Since Alexander Pearce escaped, over 250 people have disappeared in the Tasmanian wilderness. No remains have ever been found." - Dying Breed

Roland Deschain wrote:Oi 'ad to travel with thee landlubbers thee other day, and oi 'ad an hexperience which will scarify yoo into senility! Oi 'ad to go inland - it was a necessary mission to pillage for grog - and oi used one o' them bus contraptions. Oi did see all sorts o' scary folk. One o' them must 'ave been a witch, as 'e 'ad sum koind o' devoice which proiduced these 'orrible sounds loike an 'erd of olyphaunts bein' drowned in a vat of aceed. It assaulted me ears to such a degree, that oi 'ad to say to the scurvy landlubber that 'is noise was upsettin' a number of people, includin' me. 'E threatend me with voilence! Can yoo believe that? Oi 'adn't put on me pirate regalia, as oi was bein' incognitow, but as soon as oi got out me cutlass, 'e soon backed down an' apologoised, but for a whoile it were very scary.

However them gizmos do ave their uses at sea and ere be a salutaree tale wot hinvovlves thhe hinvenshun wot ye be refferin to in your ditty:

Arrrrr...it be a stormy noight outside The Benbow, the Thai Food aint turned up an the stripper caught a cold so...pull up a chair me hearties an listen to me tale...it'll cost ye a Capn's Delight each o course...

The Treasure of The Sirens

Many's the buccaneer what's come to grief whilst searchin for the Treasure of the Sirens. Legend has it, as ye steer yer ship near the island, a bunch o ghostly wenches begin to sing, and so lovely is their song that no man can resist them. Ship after ship has been lured onto the terrible rocks with the loss of all hands thereon.

A chance hencounter, at Madame Fifi's, ended with me procurin the secret location of the Treasure and I set off on the long voyage forthwith. As we approached the cursed Isles the wind seemed to pick up and the Sirens began their song, quietly at first but rising to an eerie crescendo. I ordered the Bosun to switch off his Kate Bush record but no, there it was, the terrible but beautiful singing was all around us luring us to our certain deaths!

Quick as flash I put my plan into action. Every man and boy aboard that ship strapped on an Ipod which blasted out the songs of 'GUNS n FISH HEADS' at full volume. The terrible deafening rock music drowned out the Sirens' song and we sailed on past safely to glory. We reached the secret Treasure Cove and retrieved the booty.

Sadly, the booty only just about covered the cost of 150 Ipod Nanos, and the crew were so deaf that we crashed into an iceberg full of penguins on the way home and sank!

The smoke wafted gently in the breeze across the poop deck and all seemed right in the world.

It had been one of those Dark and Stormy nights again but, tucked up in my cabin after a few groggs, I was having a lovely dream...

In the dream I was tucked up with that lovely blonde Scottish weather girl from thee BBC and she was saying, in that lovely soft Scottish brogue of hers: “Och Again Barty, Again the nooo…” I replied wearily “Can you give us tomorrow’s weather report first me dear? We’re rounding the Horn at 4 bells.” “Och aye Cap’n”, said the weather girl “I’ll go round the horn with ye any time…Now then, there’s a front coming in from the South, it’s a weak feature (unlike her front) but the remains of Hurricane Higgins could bring more rain and localised flooding to parts of Scotland and the North…”

“Thee North, thee North, thee North...”

“Round the Horn, round the horn, round the horn...”

“Localised flooding, localised flooding, localised flooding…”

Suddenly I was rudely awakened by banging on me cabin door (tis the only sort of banging I actually get these days). The first Mate was there with the mornings’s briefs…I hastily put them on and then let the first mate give me the news:

“Firstly, The Breakfast is cooking Captain”

“Second, the Fish Heads have been scrubbed ready for re-boiling”

“Third, the Ship’s carpenter has got a cold and wont be joining us in the lunch time deck hockey.

“Fourth…We’re sinking!”

Well I wasn’t pleased…sure enough thee Big Brenda was absorbing sea water as fast as me shredded wheat was soaking up milk. There was nothing for it but to make an emergency port o call at Cartagena…the vipers nest, swarming wiv nasty Spaniards. If the Spaniards found out we were English Pirates we’d all be for the high jump. Fortunately we had on board a Mexican, Alfonso, who spoke fluent Spanish and he could act as Captain…and so Capitan Alfonso the Brave was born.

We dressed him up in my best Spanish togs, wiv a giant floppy poofy Spanish hat, twelve pistols, a blunderbuss and a huge cutlass and sent him ashore to negotiate the repairs with a big bag o gold.

Days went by wiv no sign of Capitan Alfonso, while we skulked below deck. Even the parrot had his beak tied up to stop him squawking ‘Pieces of Eight’ instead of Pedazos de ocho which I just couldn’t get the bugger to learn.

Weeks went by and still no sign of Alfonso.

Eventually we found out some idiot had left thee underwater viewing porthole open (I always suspected seaman Cousteau on that one) and were ready to sail away safely.

When we got back to Portsmouth there was a postcard waiting for me:

Dear Capitan Bart,

Many Greetings from thee United States. I have job at Ye Walmart. Thank you for the nice clothes and thee gold. I will never forget you.

Love Alfonso.

The smoke wafted gently in the breeze across the poop deck and all seemed right in the world.

Arrr, there I were in the High Street mindin' me own business when I's nearly gets meself run over. I were deep in thought coz I'd just come out o' the cinema where I'd seen that film "Portsmoutheus". It be the type o' film that leaves the viewer ponderin' loads o' questions -- questions like "What were the point o' that?" an "How does I get me money back?"

Anyways, this big covered wagon nearly knocks me down, so I draws me cutlass an goes to 'ave a quiet word wi' the driver only to discover that it were old Smoothie Shaw.

"'Allo Smoothie," I sez ('ee be called Smoothie coz 'is 'ead looks like its been in a blender). "'Ow yoos been keepin' then?"

"Ah Cap'n," 'ee sez. "Me nerves be shot lately; I had the most terrible experience o' me life. Let's be having a drink in yon tavern an' I'll be telling ye about it." Well, after sittin' through that rotten film, I were eager to hear a decent story, so we went and sat at a table an' ordered a couple o' tankards o' grog. Smoothie took a couple o' big swigs an' began...

"We were in the South China Sea. We'd had a run-in wi' a privateer that left us damaged, an' then we has the bad luck t' run into a tropical storm that smashed the main mast, an so we be just driftin' until the carpenter could fix up the mast fer us.

After about a day o' driftin', the midshipman pipes up that 'ee can see a ship on the horizon. The cap'n peered through his spyglass at it an saw tat it flew no colours, an' appeared to be unarmed. We couldn't chase after it ourselves, but we could tell it were driftin' toward us.

A few hours later, the ship were no more than a quarter o' a mile away. We tried signallin' it, but got no response. The cap'n peered hard wi' his spyglass but could see no-one aboard. The ship looked deserted. 'Ee ordered three men to take a rowboat an' go an' board the other ship.

We all stood at the ship's rail as we watched the men boarding the other ship. The three o' them were standin' on the deck when it looked like a blanket or summit rushed up an' covered them up. There were a few moments o' furious movement, then I saw three cleanly picked skeletons fall to the floor.

The Cap'n dropped his spyglass in horror, so I picked it up an' peered across at the other ship. I soon wished I hadn't -- what I saw were a huge boiling mass o' starvin' rats; each one as big as a cat wi' huge curved teeth. An' all o' them rats had their fierce little eyes trained on us.

Well, the Cap'n shouted for us t' man the guns an' sink the ship o' rats. Trouble was, we'd used up all our cannonballs wi' our fight wi' the privateer, an there were none left. We estimated that the rats would be on us in about three minutes, an' the carpenter thought it'd be at least two hours 'till the mast were fixed. It weren't lookin' good.

There were loads o' screamin' an shoutin' on board, an then the we noticed that the Cap'n were lowerin' the lifeboat. "Cap'n!" we shouted, "'ow many of us are ye takin' in the lifeboat?" The Cap'n replied wi' summit along the lines o' "Stuff you lot!" and began rowin' away.

Gunner Harris shouted that 'eed rather die than be eaten by the rats, an set a fuse to the powder barrels. The rest o' us said we'd rather take our chances in the water than be blown up by that mad git, so over the side we went.

No sooner were we in the water than the two ships touched an' all the rats poured over to our ship. At that moment there were a huge explosion an' all the rats were blown into the air. Quite by chance, they all came down in a big pile on the lifeboat. The last thing I remembers seein' were the lifeboat receding into the distance filled wi' a mountain o' rats topped by a forlorn lookin' skull wearin' an eyepatch an a Cap'ns hat.

Anyways, there was plenty o' driftwood fer the rest o' us to cling on to, an we made it to land the nex' day."

"Well," I sez after Smoothie 'ad finished 'is tale. "A dreadful experience. Is that why yer turned yer back on the sea an' became a van driver instead?"

"Don't be daft," sez Smoothie. "I gets 2 groats ah hour an a company pension. What does I wanna be on a leaky ol' boat for?"